World

Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane Isn't in Search Area, Officials Say

In a Monday, April 14, 2014 photo provided by the U.S. Navy, operators aboard the Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield move the U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle into position for deployment to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The autonomous underwater vehicle searching for debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet off the coast of Australia concluded its search on Thursday, finding no sign of the plane. The ship that’s been towing the device, called the Bluefin-21, is now headed back to base.

“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and in its professional judgement, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre announced in a statement.

Bluefin-21 has scoured more than 330 square miles of the seafloor, searching the immediate vicinity where ships detected “pings” in April.

operators aboard the Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield move the U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle into position for deployment to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The authorities now believe those pings didn't come from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s black boxes, but they were instead from a man-made object — perhaps the ships themselves, Michael Dean, the Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering, tells CNN.

"Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," Dean said.

Navy officials soon hit back at Dean’s comments, saying his statements were “speculative and premature,” and “it is not his place to say it.”

Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said however, “We are a cautious and evidence based organization... we do not understand the signals sufficiently to understand their cause.”

Still, relatives of some of the missing passengers reacted with fury to the news that the Australians may have been searching in the wrong place after all.

“It just is another slap in the face,” Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul was aboard the plane, told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It's just another long road for us and look, I'm just shattered by the news. I'm absolutely shattered.”

Sarah Bajc, partner to one of the missing passengers, told CNN’s New Day, “This is intentional misdirection.” She says the families believe officials leading the search continue to hide information.

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